HOWTO: Win32 Video Codecs

This HOWTO is aimed at all the users of Ubuntu (both 32 and 64bit although wmv9 files don't work in Ubuntu 64bit) and it is useful because win32 codecs aren't available anymore in the repositories for legal reasons.

This guide is a revised version of a guide of mine specifically aimed at 64bit users. I decided to post this new one in order to avoid misunderstandings.

If you want to watch your movies (avi and wmv) or listen to your music files (wma) which require Win32 codecs this is what you need:

1)You have to OWN A LEGAL COPY of Windows, because these are proprietary codecs (somebody correct me if I'm wrong)

Re: HOWTO: Win32 Video Codecs

I've got Gxine playing audio .wma files very nicely, following these instructions, but I can't get those .wma files to play in Totem. When I looked at your instructions, I neglected to run Totem before installing the w32 codecs, and I wonder if that was the problem. Do you know where the config file is so that I could try deleting it and starting over???

EDIT: Found the answer: needed to install gstreamer0.8-ffmpeg from universe.

Re: HOWTO: Win32 Video Codecs

Re: HOWTO: Win32 Video Codecs

Both the first set of directions and the download from the repo didn't do it for me. Weird because I installed lame and couldn't play mp3 files. My solution was to install and then uninstall VLC player.

Now it seems like I can play everything in totem fine, except DVDs. With libdvdcss DVD playback is a little choppy in totem, watchable but distracting. In VLC, DVD playback is smooth.